Driver With MS Says DMV Judged Disability, Not Him

The ’72 Mustang in the carport outside Tom and Ginny Carr’s Fullerton home has 250,000 miles on it. But in the last week, it has become more a symbolic battleground than a set of wheels.

Last Saturday, the Department of Motor Vehicles informed Tom Carr that his license was being suspended. He must surrender his license, the letter said, noting he faced possible arrest and jail if stopped while driving with a suspended license.

No, Carr had not had any accidents. No, he had not been arrested for drinking and driving. No, he had not committed any other crimes, nor were there any outstanding warrants.

What he does have is multiple sclerosis. Now 50, he’s had MS since 1970 and has used a wheelchair since 1972--the year he bought the Mustang. Since then, he’s been driving it with hand controls and has put most of those 250,000 miles on the car himself.

The DMV has a different view of Carr’s driving ability. After giving him two driving tests in recent months and reviewing its records, the department told Carr that “your physical disability renders you incapable of safely operating a motor vehicle.”

Tom Carr said he’s puzzled, because the driving inspector told him after his second test in November that he had passed. A DMV official wouldn’t comment on that, saying she wasn’t at liberty to discuss individual cases.

However, that official--Cindy Chiaverini in the Irvine office of DMV’s licensing operations division--was willing to speak generically about licensing disabled drivers.

Whenever someone with a disability, disorder or medical condition applies for a license or a renewal, she said, DMV is required to determine if the condition affects the person’s driving. A disabled person with a stable condition isn’t subject to repeated testing, she said. Carr, a retired nuclear engineer, said his doctor has described his condition as stable, but Chiaverini said of MS: “By nature and definition, it’s progressive.”

Ultimately, Chiaverini said, “it comes down to whether the person can compensate for the disability or the dysfunction they may have.”

In Carr’s case, he and the DMV are a few miles apart.

What vexes him the most is that he’s willing to limit his driving significantly, anyway. Since they bought a wheelchair-equipped van three years ago, Ginny has done almost all of the driving.

“Taking the Mustang is a special thing we do,” Ginny said. “We can’t walk on the beach. We can’t go swimming, but we can do this fun little thing in the Mustang. We put the top down and go get a chicken sandwich and go to the park. It’s something meaningful to us.”

“It’s not a big deal to me not to drive all over the place,” Tom said. “Ginny is the driver of the van. Never me. Driving the Mustang is just a little date for my wife, so she doesn’t have to be the driver all the time.”

The larger issue, of course, is safety. Not just for the Carrs, but for others they may encounter on the road.

The Carrs concur but believe a more stringent standard was applied to Tom during his test than that for an able-bodied person.

“The DMV doesn’t believe we have the brains to put limitations on ourselves,” Ginny said. She contracted polio at 2 1/2 and has driven all her adult life with hand controls. “We know better than anyone what our restrictions are. We put them on ourselves. They treat us like idiots, like we don’t have a brain in our heads. Tom has a master’s degree from USC and I’m a medical technologist.”

Although DMV licenses thousands of disabled drivers, an advocate for the disabled says the agency is hopelessly out of step.

“Being disabled, I understand the need for the DMV to be cautious,” said Shelby Smith of the Dayle McIntosh Center for the Disabled in Anaheim. “I’m visually challenged. I use a guide dog. I understand why DMV does not want someone like myself driving, but for those who do have the ability to drive, even though they’re disabled, you have individuals at DMV who don’t have a clue--the education, the background or the sensitivity training to work with these people. They’re making executive decisions they have no business making on people’s lives.”

Smith said he’s worked with more than 350 types of disabled persons. What must be done, he said, is to look at each case individually. Smith said he works with about 600 disabled people in his job at the center and hears anecdotal stories about their problems with the DMV.

“I respect them [DMV officials] for what they want to do, but I don’t respect them for the way they do it,” he said.

What don’t they know about the disabled population? I asked Smith.

“You said you only had a short column,” he replied. “The most important thing is that we have a non-disabled population making decisions based on stereotypes, some antiquated back 200 years.”

Conceding that Ginny is more passionate about the fight than he, Tom said he’ll contest the suspension. “The DMV is defining the ground rules, and we have to play by their rules,” he said. “And I’m going to try and pass the test by their rules. I could go either way [on fighting the suspension], but I would like to be able to continue to take the Mustang out for our short sojourns here and there.”

Besides, he added with appropriate irony, “I honestly think I’m driving better than I was three or four years ago.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.